Dry Trimming

Definition - What does Dry Trimming mean?

Dry trimming is
a method of trimming the buds from a cannabis plant after the plant itself has
mostly dried. It is less commonly used than wet trimming (trimming before
drying), but does offer some benefits that many growers appreciate.

MaximumYield explains Dry Trimming

In order to access the flower bud where the THC and CBD are found in the cannabis plant, growers must trim the buds. There are two primary ways of doing this. Wet trimming takes place before the plant has dried. Dry trimming is the opposite. Both options work, but dry trimming is rarer than wet trimming.

In the dry trimming process, few if any leaves are removed before the plant is hung up to dry. If a grower removes anything, it will be the large fan leaves only, and the smaller sugar leaves and buds will be left intact. These will be hung and dried slowly. The drawback here is the time required. While buds do need to be dried slowly to ensure the best possible quality, drying the majority of the plant takes longer than only drying buds.

However, the biggest benefit of using the dry trimming method is that a trimming machine can be used. With wet trimming, the bulk of the process must be done by hand. This makes it more labor intensive than dry trimming, which can drive up costs. However, many purists feel that wet trimming results in a better quality bud, and will go out of their way to obtain wet trimmed marijuana.

With that being said, hand cutting can take place with dry trimming as well – it’s much slower than when done with wet trimming, and removing the sugar leaves from the buds is all but impossible.